“Experience is the worst teacher. It gives the test before giving the lesson.” Unknown The book “What I learned losing one million dollars” by Brendan Moynihan should be required reading for every investor. The book shares the story of legendary trader, Jim Paul, then President of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, who was unceremoniously removed after…
Yes, but not in the ways that most people think. When someone experiences a liquidity event, it is often accompanied with visions of a new home, new car, redecorating the house, a new pool in the backyard, or paying off debt. Whether it’s an entrepreneur or inner-city athlete signing his first NFL contract, there is…
Corrected as of May 11, 2015. Original draft blog was inadvertently published April 29, 2015. Divorce is never easy and always painful. But as an entrepreneur divorce can put your business in serious jeopardy. There is no magic bullet; and the process is going to awful if both parties are not amicable, especially if kids…
On our annual ski trip, we decided to ride the California Zephyr, which cuts an unimaginable path through the Rockies. We arrived at the terminal in Denver at 7 am to check our bags and were greeted with something that looked like it came off the set of Indiana Jones. The luggage cart with steel…
I have written about retirement before, even arguing “Don’t save for retirement” at times to make the point that saving for retirement is not about building a certain amount of net worth on which to retire. To reach your Point of Independence, it is much more important to focus on creating a recurring revenue model…
The list below (Source: WSJ / Phoenix Marketing International) shows the number of households with at least $1 million to invest per state. According to the table there are 163,144 millionaires in Georgia, which is down some 7,000 millionaires from 2012. How could we lose 7,000 millionaires when 2013 was clearly a winner for the…
A policeman sees a drunk searching for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. The man answers he has lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he…
I am not sure how I convinced Scarlett to give the financial planning process one more chance. Her experience with financial planners had been awful. The meetings made her feel dumb — “They looked at me like I was nuts for what I thought was a very simple question. How much do I need to…
Lifestyle Cash Flow is the linchpin of your Point of Independence. Yet when I ask, “How much after-tax cash flow does it take to support your family each year?” very few people know the answer. In our Blue Pages we call this number Lifestyle Cash Flow. It represents the sum total of every dollar spent…
I was trying to change the taillight bulb in my car this weekend and realized that the head of the screw matched nothing in my toolkit. The dealership requested $185 to replace the bulb, a price I was not willing to pay to change a lightbulb! So I headed to my local Advance Auto Parts…